1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of managing medical diagnostic data registered in a database system such as a database sharing network.
2. Description of the Background Art
A database sharing network is a network in which a database storing a number of registered data is shared among a plurality of users operating a plurality of terminal work stations connected to the database through communication lines.
The database can register data in various forms including image data and text data. In such a database sharing network, in order to obtain the desired data from the database, it is necessary for the user to make an access to the network through the terminal work station and carry out the prescribed data look up operation on the terminal work station. The prescribed data look up operation normally includes either the input of the identification data of the desired data, such as an ID code assigned to the desired data or a data name of the desired data, at the terminal work station by using a keyboard or the specifying of the desired data on the identification data menu displayed on the terminal work station by using a pointing device.
Such a database sharing network is particularly useful for managing medical diagnostic data, where a doctor can produce a new diagnostic report according to the medical examination results, medical diagnostic images such as X-ray images and tomographic images, and clinical chart of a specific patient, by utilizing the registered data of the database sharing network such as the other medical examination results, other medical diagnostic images, medical reference documents, other clinical charts, and other diagnostic reports, as the reference data. Here, such reference data utilized in producing the new diagnostic report may be written into the new diagnostic report in terms of their identification data. The new diagnostic report produced by using the database sharing network will then be registered in the database as the data that can be looked up later on by the same doctor who have produced this diagnostic report or by any other doctors using the database sharing network as the reference data.
In addition, such a database sharing network can also be utilized in holding a conference among a plurality of doctors using the database sharing network equipped with appropriate conference terminal devices. In such a case, a host doctor selects the necessary ones of the registered data to be used during the conference in advance, such that the necessary data can be presented to the participants of the conference through the conference terminal devices connected to the database sharing network, according to the data look up operations made by the host doctor.
Now, in such a conventional database sharing network, when the user wishes to look up the particular reference data that had been looked up before while working on a particular currently interested data, it is necessary for the user to repeat the same data look up operation for that particular reference data again, and such repetitive data look up operations can be quite time consuming and cumbersome to the users.
In particular, in the database sharing network for the medical diagnostic data, the doctor using the database sharing network for the purpose of working on a particular currently interested medical diagnostic data frequently encounters the situation in which it is necessary to look up the same reference data for a number of times during a single diagnostic session, such that these repetitive data look up operations are not only cumbersome things to do on the user terminal by himself but also painfully time consuming as a considerable amount of time is required for making such operations on the user terminal as well as for obtaining the desired data on the user terminal from the database sharing network in response to such operations, while the period for a single diagnostic session is usually very limited and the time consumed in conjunction with the repetitive data look up operations considerably reduces the time available for the doctor to carry out the other diagnostic activities.